How to Heal from Sexual Shame
I have yet to meet someone who has struggled with sex or porn addiction or unwanted sexual compulsive behaviors who didn’t also struggle with shame. So many of the men and women I work with have felt a pervasive sense of shame for their whole lives, especially those who have religious backgrounds. But what is shame?
Shame is the insidious feeling that you are, at your very core, bad, wrong, unlovable, or defective. Shame tells you a story about your identity, about who you are. It’s a story that makes you want to hide, to disconnect from others, because shame tells you that you aren’t worthy to connect with others. Shame isolates, thrives in darkness, and longs to stay hidden.
Sexual shame is a particularly tenacious, destructive feeling, as sexuality too is so much a part of one’s identity. Sexuality is ultimately an expression of our desire to connect with others, but shame tells us that our desire to connect with others is wrong or sinful. So sexual shame can cause sexuality to go underground, so that those struggling with secret sexual shame express their sexuality in isolation with pornography, compulsive masturbation, or other addictive behaviors that only exacerbate their shame.
Healing from sexual shame is an essential step in the journey of recovery from sex and pornography addiction. But more broadly, it’s important for anyone who wants to cultivate healthy, integrated sexuality.
So how can you heal from sexual shame? Everyone’s journey is different, and the journey out of shame takes time. But here’s how you can start.
Leave Behind Unhealthy Sexual Behaviors
Recently I wrote a blog post about healthy sex versus unhealthy sex. To recap, unhealthy sexual behaviors are any behaviors that involve some degree of dissociation, of leaving the present moment and escaping to fantasy or numbing. Unhealthy sex leaves us feeling ashamed because it is based in shame, and we want to hide from others. That’s why sexual addiction stays hidden, usually until one’s partner discovers it.
To shed our sexual shame, we need to stop engaging in the behaviors that perpetuate it. So what behaviors are creating this shame in your life? They can be any of the following, for example:
Strip clubs
Pornography
Prostitutes
Cybersex
Webcamming
Affairs
Sexual massage
Phone sex
Craigslist hookups
Originates from shame-based sexuality
Takes advantage of others
Compromises one’s integrity
Confuses intensity for intimacy
Reenacts trauma and cements arousal patterns in the brain
Requires a level of dissociation
Is organized around the past and future (i.e., euphoric recall and fantasy)
Relies on self-loathing and self-destruction
Seeks power and control
Is covert and manipulative
Serves to avoid feelings at all costs
Is fraudulent
Creates a tolerance that requires more stimulation
Requires compartmentalization
Is rigid and routine
Is without meaning and devoid of eroticism or a spiritual connection
Forgiving Yourself
We often think about forgiveness as a one-time event, but more commonly it’s an ongoing process wherein we remember, allow ourselves to feel, and process feelings of anger, self-loathing, and grief with safe people in order to let them go. Forgiving yourself is like that. We need to continually release feelings of shame instead of holding onto it in our hearts.
One other way of learning to forgive yourself is learning self-compassion. Showing yourself compassion means understanding your personal history and your choices and behavior in the context of that story.
We develop compassion for ourselves when we learn to see that we were acting out of our own pain when we made the choices and engaged in the behaviors that we’re ashamed of.
Self-compassion is also a continual practice. We can practice showing compassion to ourselves every time we consciously notice that we feel shame and sexual shame, graciously turning inward with self-acceptance and openness and reframing our shame, reorienting our thoughts and feelings toward self-love.
Reclaim Your Body
Sexual shame can manifest as hatred toward our bodies. Many people who experience such shame loathe certain features about themselves and find themselves unattractive, ugly, or repulsive. Those in recovery from sexual addiction can feel ashamed about certain types of sex or sexual acts, or even about being sexual at all (this can manifest as sexual anorexia).
To heal, we need to realize that each of us is beautiful in our uniqueness and to celebrate that uniqueness. Our culture has terribly destructive beauty standards and idealizes certain body types and features, so that breaking free of these standards and embracing one’s own body is essential. Here are a few ideas on how to do this:
Make a gratitude list of things that you’re grateful for about your body and review it at least once a day.
Write down affirmations to yourself about your body. Record the positive comments others have said about your body.
Learn to love your body by taking care of your body: eat nutritious foods, start an exercise regimen, try something like acupuncture or homeopathy, and get medical checkups regularly. (Getting in better shape worked wonders for me.)
Build a Base of Knowledge about Sex and Sexuality
In order to heal from sexual shame, we first need to make it “talkable,” as an old supervisor of mine used to say. That is, we often need permission to talk openly about sex and sexuality. We need reassurance that sex is healthy, good, and positive, and that our sexual needs are normal and deserve to be understood and met.
More than that, building a base of knowledge about sex and sexuality can disarm shame we have about our bodies and our sexual longings. Many of the men I talk to about sex are ashamed about their difficulty maintaining an erection or reaching orgasm too quickly. Talking openly about this with me and sharing with them some information about, for instance, the sexual response cycle, about male anatomy, and performance anxiety can greatly reduce the shame they have about their sexual problems.
Finally, building a knowledge base about sex can be a great way to explore new sexual preferences and experiences we either didn’t know about before or were too ashamed to explore further. It’s a wide sexual world out there, after all.
Connecting with Safe People
Our sexual shame was born from our experiences in our relationships, and so working on sexual shame, or any shame for that matter, cannot be done in isolation. We need to connect with safe people and share our stories, to reveal ourselves to those we can trust.
This step is the most important way we have of healing our shame and cannot be skipped.
As long as our stories and experiences are shrouded in the darkness of ignorance, isolation, fear, trauma, or shame, we will not experience the healing we need. When we connect with safe, compassionate, empathetic, and caring individuals and share our story, we will shed our sexual shame and feel loved and accepted for who we are.
About the Author
Jeremy Mast is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist, and the founder and director of the Center for Integrative Change. He is passionate about helping those struggling with substance use and problematic sexual behaviors and their loved ones find lasting healing. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, rock climbing, health and fitness, and trying out new recipes while cooking at home.